Ed Miliband shares the bill with Joan Bakewell and Eddie Izzard

Ed Miliband hopes some of the stardust of Joan Bakewell and Eddie Izzard will
rub off on him

Ed Miliband smiles at his first conference as Labour leaderPhoto: REUTERS

By Tim Walker

8:00AM BST 26 Sep 2011

While it remains to be seen whether Ed Miliband will be able to pull off the party trick of David Cameron and Nick Clegg and address his first conference as Labour leader off-the-cuff tomorrow, even his most fervent cheerleaders aren’t expecting a great deal of star quality.

Miliband will, however, be able to import it in the unlikely shapes of Eddie Izzard and Dame Joan Bakewell who will, I can disclose, be performing a “three-hander” with the Labour leader at the conference in Liverpool on Wednesday afternoon.

“The details have still to be worked out as it’s a bit of a last minute thing, but the idea is to show how spontaneous Ed can be,” says Dame Joan, who has only lately declared her allegiance by taking the Labour whip in the Lords. “I will pick out people to put questions to the party leader and chair any discussion. We will leave all the twirly, funny stuff, which will undoubtedly get all the laughs, to Eddie.”

I need hardly add that’s a reference to Izzard rather than Miliband. The comedian has never made any secret of his politics, but Dame Joan says she has only felt able to “come out” about hers relatively late in life. “When I was at the BBC, asking politicians questions during my days on programmes like Newsnight, I always had to to be strictly impartial,” says Dame Joan. “I don’t do any of that now, so I feel able to make it clear where I stand.”

How things have changed at Labour since the days of that grand old actor-manager Tony Blair, who always had a Sir Donald Wolfit-like dread of sharing the limelight with another mortal soul.